Duane Gran’s log of thoughts

On this Good Friday I’m necessarily brought to a place of reverence for a carpenter and Savior who washed the feet of others. If the transition seems not too abrupt, I want to draw attention to one of the most thought provoking articles about labor that I’ve read in years. I could quote volumes from it, but I’ll share the most stirring passage for me:

Knowing the production narrative, or at least being able to plausibly imagine it, renders the social narrative of the advertisement less potent.

My effort in writing here is to raise awareness (my own and others) about the dignity of human enterprise. Anything that promotes material desire, such as advertising, necessarily is a threat to our innate desire to commune with and serve God.

This evening I will be a guest on WINA 1070 AM from 5 to 5:30pm on Coy Barefoot’s popular “Charlottesville Right Now” program. I will be joined by guests from Kiwanis and the Lion’s Club to talk about the impact of service groups, such as Rotary, in our local community and abroad. My points will largely echo previous comments I’ve written but I hope to expand a little on specific philanthropy efforts. For my far flung readers (all three of you) I suspect the show will be cataloged via podcast in the next few days.

Update: (16 Oct 2006) The audio is available, courtesy of the Charlottesville Podcasting Network.

I have steered clear of making any statements about the political race for the Virginia Senate seat, which pits challenger James Webb against incumbent Senator George Allen. However, I’m puzzled by the behavior of local GOP staffers in yesterday’s brief visit in Charlottesville by the Senator. A Daily Progress article says:

Albemarle GOP Chairman Keith Drake positioned himself in front of a Webb staffer tracking Wednesday’s event with a digital camera so that she could not get unobstructed images of Allen talking.

When the woman, who gave her first name as Joan and said she lived in Vienna, tried to hold her camera over Drake’s head, the Allen supporter turned and thrust his camera in front of hers, repeatedly blocking her view.

I have no position on personality issues which hound the incumbent, other than to say that it is bad press to appear like you have henchmen guarding you from the appearance of accountability. Every politician has to assume that their words will be heard and parsed. Given enough time on tape everyone will gaffe, but worse than indiscretion on tape may be the appearance that party loyalists are desperate to block video coverage of the Senator’s statements.

None of this should reflect poorly on the Senator, but I would think party loyalists in Albemarle County would rethink their strategy.

Update: A Hook article sheds some more light on the matter. According to Drake, who blocked the camera, Joan was being disrespectful at the event. If that is the case, then both sides need to raise the standards on decorum at these events.

An article in The New Atlantis beautifully expresses my thoughts on the value of craft over consumerism:

Because craftsmanship refers to objective standards that do not issue from the self and its desires, it poses a challenge to the ethic of consumerism, as the sociologist Richard Sennett has recently argued. The craftsman is proud of what he has made, and cherishes it, while the consumer discards things that are perfectly serviceable in his restless pursuit of the new. … Knowing the production narrative, or at least being able to plausibly imagine it, renders the social narrative of the advertisement less potent.

I’ve heaped praise on the innate worth of labor and I’ve vilified the habits and aims of advertisers, but I never saw the connection between the two until now.

Professional cycling is unique in the sporting word because they test often and the UCI will disqualify riders on circumstantial evidence. High levels of testosterone, as discovered in this year’s Tour winner, are a possible indicator of various performance enhancements, but it can also happen naturally. They also look for high levels of hemocrit in the blood, but that can happen naturally. This all has the unfortunate effect of making cycling look like a dirty sport, when in fact the authorities and sponsors are just more serious about testing and catching cheaters.

For each stage of the Tour de France (and other large stage races) they always test the winner and a random group of cyclists. They take two samples, creatively called the A and B sample. If the A sample comes up positive, the B sample is then tested. This is done to avoid a single source of authority or error. The organizers of the race, for reasons which escape me, announce when there is a positive A sample. This causes a mad scramble among teams and sponsors to proclaim their riders to be clean which leads to a quick process of elimination whereby everyone knows in 24 hours who is suspected of doping. The media generally bypasses the nuance of the B sample and proclaims the sportsman and the sport to be dirty. That is how we got where we are today.

I think they should confine themselves to solid evidence, but I don’t get to make the rules. I would put my bets on it that Landis rode a clean race, but there is no reason to believe the B sample (due to be tested this week) won’t reveal the same high level of testosterone. He will be stripped of his title and the media will be awash with two exaggerations:

1. The French are crazy and they are out to harass American sportsmen
2. Cycling is a dirty sport

Neither is the case, but it takes a clever journalist to comprehend the history and culture of cycling. There is a fairly simple explanation for the events as of late: professional cyclists are freaks of nature. They are not like you and I. Miguel Indurain, a five time tour winner, has a heart 1/3 larger than the typical human. He was known to be capable of returning to a 60 beat per minute heart rate within a minute after cresting a mountain top during a race. Normal humans can’t do that. Lance Armstrong is an absolute freak of nature, given his VO2 Max (rate of oxygen capacity in blood) and lactic acid threshold.

Some people are born with physical talent and a few work hard to develop it. Fewer still use performance enhancing drugs, but if these collective freaks of nature on bikes register high levels of testosterone it just might be because they are the most elite sportsmen in the world.

I previously wrote about new companies which remove various smut and violence from popular films. Because they operate on a legally purchased copy of the media it was presumed that the producers would be content with their profits and allow the niche service to carry on.

Unfortunately the courts have decided that the practice violates copyright. Michael Apted, president of the Directors Guild of America, commented on the ruling:

Audiences can now be assured that the films they buy or rent are the vision of the filmmakers who made them and not the arbitrary choices of a third-party editor.

Yes, the producers can rest easy knowing that their vision of violence and sexual permissiveness will be preserved. The sad part is that the producers appear to make no effort to acknowledge legitimate interests of media consumers who seek a third way between accepting their vision and not patronizing film. Such a third way would have opened to door to various re-imaginations of film, but the companies which produce the material also dictate its final format.

What the plaintiffs fail to understand, or respect, is that the media consumer is a participant and that once a work is made public it takes on a form of community ownership. We sing the “happy birthday song” at birthdays because we know it (but beware since its copyright status is in limbo) or we recognize the 1812 overture as distinctly Russian because it borrows from thematic elements of previous Russian classics. While the producer should retain certain rights, common ownership of media is diminished by the recent court ruling.

Update (11 July 2006): An alternative option, called Clear Play may be useful in the wake of the ruling.

The Cavalier Daily, a newspaper for students at The University of Virginia, explains its editorial position for filing a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control’s regulations on alcohol advertising. They are joined by the Virginia Tech Collegiate Times. College papers in Virginia are prohibited from advertising alcohol, presumably since the demographic is decidedly tilted toward those who are legally prevented from imbibing.

Is this a matter of free speech or one of fees and revenue? Alcohol is already a well regulated commodity and restrictions on advertising are well established in print, radio and television. Let’s consider for a moment who wins and who loses in this scenario.

I remember vividly each year arriving back on campus at my alma mater, Ball State University, to a barrage of alcohol advertising in our student paper*. In fact, one could see prominent “welcome back BSU students” signs at the local brewery’s and liquor stores. Students were regarded as a cash cow for booze purchases and the paper gladly accepted advertising revenue. Who won? The purveyors and the newspaper, but it is the student body who lost.

This isn’t to say that they had no hand in the matter. I personally contributed my (albeit small) part to the alcohol economy during college, but what is the logic of directing ads to a group that by and large is legally forbidden to purchase or consume the product? The logic, if it dare be called such, is that students will skirt the law and advertiser and newspaper alike can look the other way.

The paper offers the following defense:

By fighting for commercial speech we are defending the democratic principles of a free press and seeking to secure the paper on firmer financial ground.

Aside from the misnomer about commercial speech, their allegedly principled objection is belied by the monetary aim.

* Note: I was a columnist for the Ball State Daily News and made my disagreement with the editorial decision to accept alcohol advertising known.

A Commercial Alert bulletin warns about a new venue for advertising to children:

BusRadio, a start-up company in Massachusetts, wants to pipe into school buses around the country a private radio network that plays music, public-service announcements, contests and, of course, ads, aimed at kids as they travel to and from school.

It is shameful when we allow our public schools to become so impoverished that selling out children has become not only acceptable, but is called good policy in some circles. I was a student at a public school in 1990 when Channel One was introduced. Today the corporation has a direct conduit to 8 million students at 12,000 public schools, where they endorse soda and their own slant on the news. My efforts, naive as there were as a 16 year-old, to expose bias and propaganda fell on deaf ears. It is hard to make a principled objection to a school system when they have sold out.

More than ever we need to recognize the real harm done when school systems are bled dry or divert education funds into the pits of technology and sport.

Jaun Cole has launched The Global Americana Institute, an ambitious project to coordinate the translation and dissemination of classic American thought, such as the writings of Paine, Jefferson and Franklin. Cole’s announcement of the initiative reveals that America’s founding principles aren’t communicated in Middle Eastern languages. Occasionally they are studied at Universities in English, but the knowledge of American ideals remain a sort of dark net. Naturally, misinformation and mythology consume the darkness.

Cole goes further to challenge municipalities and historical societies to join the effort. In particular, he speaks to my community:

What about Virginia and especially Charlottesville? Don’t they want Thomas Jefferson available in Arabic? Can anyone there help with putting us in touch with funders?

I don’t have a definitive answer, but if someone connected with Monticello is reading, maybe we can put our heads together on this (my contact info). I’m sure we can forge a public-private partnership to raise funds for the translation.

A Telegraph article reports that the US State Department and Business for Diplomatic Action have partnered together to remedy brash behavior which contributes to negative impressions of Americans abroad. Together they “plan an image make-over by issuing guides for Americans travelling overseas on how to behave.”

Bravo. This marks a change in strategy from past media blitzes and promotional campaigns from on high. The new strategy encourages anyone who travels to become a citizen ambassador. Not only does the new initiative distribute the task, it directs effort where it will produce the most good — personal interaction between Americans and foreigners. The sixteen simple rules of etiquette may well be a boon if the travelers exercise the advice at home as well. The program, for little cost and effort, will at worst simply make us more polite.

In addition to the pamphlet campaign, the industry group will sponsor fellowships in partnership with the Young Arab Leaders. This reminds me of the Rotary Fellowship program, which has been successful in promoting cultural understanding and peace between peoples.

The Center for Media and Democracy has released a chilling report about the pervasive and irresponsible usage of video news releases (VNRs) by televisions stations. The video clips are often produced by corporations or the government, as noted previously here. The CMD monitored the use of prepackaged video by television affiliates and found that stations gladly included them in their broadcasts, disguise the VNRs as their own content and don’t verify VNR claims.

The lure of moving images and polished production appears to meet the already low threshold of newsworthiness. The causes are manifold, from constrained budgets to laziness — not the least being that of the viewing public. If we are to live up to our calling as rational beings we will require a new kind of civic awareness and digital literacy to tease apart content from advertisement.

Joshua Ellis has put together a fascinating exhibit based on a recent trip to Trinity, the location of the Manhattan Project. The essay and photos are captivating to anyone interested in cold war history. Also of interest is how Ellis went about procuring funds for the exhibit. He raised donations on his site and agreed to publish the results under a Creative Commons license.

A recent study (original source) reveals that advertising works:

Children who spend more time watching television and movies and playing video games may be more likely to ask their parents for toys, food and drinks they saw in advertisements, according to a study in the April issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a theme issue on children and the media.

File this under “duh”, as anyone who gives the matter any consideration will conclude that companies wouldn’t spend fortunes on marketing with no return on value. But the study raises a larger ethical issue: Is it right to influence the purchasing habits of children?

Marketers and the apathetic are the only segment not willing to protest advertising to children, but a growing number of parents are joining the opposition as they become weary of seeing their children used as a surrogate nagging device for corporate interests. If this seems like a dramatized explanation, consider the following excerpt from The American Prospect:

The advertising industry itself has funded dozens of studies on children designed to enhance marketing effectiveness. According to Selling to Kids–an industry newsletter, unfortunately, not a watchdog group–Saatchi & Saatchi hired clinical psychologists and cultural anthropologists to record more than 500 hours of interviews and observations of children between the ages of six and 20. Increasingly, such research is taking place in schools: According to USA TODAY, grade schools in Connecticut accepted $5,000 from a company in exchange for permission to interview 10- to 12-year-old students in classrooms after school. The Gepetto Group conducts focus groups and consults with psychologists to help businesses better understand how to market to teens by exploiting their vulnerabilities. “Teens are … an oppositional subculture, interested in shutting out the adult world,” the firm’s chief strategic officer explained in a Selling to Kids interview. “[T]here are enormous opportunities for the marketer who is able to understand both the reality and fantasy of teen life.”

Advertisers have no qualms about pitting child against parent if it means increasing profits. Is there a better way? Fortunately, there is. We can follow the lead of Sweden (and Finland), which prohibits advertising to children under the age of 12. In addition to other family-friendly public policy, they believe that children should be off-limits for advertisers and that parents should maintain autonomy over purchase decisions in the home.

This sounds like an idea where Liberals and Conservatives in America may find common ground, provided that awareness prevails over apathy.

Much has been said and written about the recent outrage of Muslims over the depiction of the prophet Muhammad in a Dutch newspaper, and the consequent reprint in European newspapers. Embassies have been evacuated, flags have burned and no one seems very happy with one another. We are told that this is a contest between free expression and religious zealotry, but among the hand wringing discussion I observe a historical disconnect where the western world and the 20-40 latitude are talking across purposes.

Put simply, the Muslim community (which means the leadership and its vocal proponents) has a 16th century world view. The west is thoroughly ensconced in the 20th century (I think the 21st is too new to discern any differences) which presumes a lot about state and government function. We are, in fact, so sure about how government and society should be structured that few people think twice about the sense of making the rest of the world in our image. While we have great mastery over the power of sword and jewel, we neglect the mirror too often.

But things seem even worse on the other side. For example, a BBC article reports that an Iranian newspaper is holding a contest for cartoons about the Holocaust. Herein lies the cross-purpose thinking: While westerners see a conflict of expression and religion, vocal Muslims (and opportunists throughout) see a conflict between Islam and Israel. If you can stomach it, a fellow Virginia writer delves into the themes of blasphemy and puts in stark relief the extreme views of those who protest the cartoons. There isn’t much room for ambiguity when a protester’s sign declares, “slay those who insult Islam”.

To put this into context, Europe has a centuries-old culture of ridiculing and lampooning religion, much to the ire of the Vatican. Most reasonable Christians have come to see such behavior as a useful counter balance to the authority of the Church and among the offended, nearly all believe in peaceful resistance to blasphemy. This viewpoint is relatively new in the past few centuries, which leads to the historical disconnect. The friction today could very well be the same as if a 16th century Christian were transported into today’s secular world.

We can’t (and I’ll go further to say we shouldn’t) secularize Muslim countries against their will, and they also can’t apply Sharia to secular society anymore than we can instate Kings and the Holy Roman Empire. However, we can — and should — find ways of getting along. To that end, it was poor taste for the Dutch publisher to commission the illustration and worse judgement for newspapers to reprint them, knowing full well that it would fan the flames of Muslim outrage. Being right about the freedom of expression is immaterial when lives are endangered.

The Christian Science Monitor offers a good summary of newspaper positions on the matter. I find the position espoused by The Guardian to be particularly apt:

The Guardian believes uncompromisingly in freedom of expression, but not in any duty to gratuitously offend. It would be senselessly provocative to reproduce a set of images, of no intrinsic value, which pander to the worst prejudices about Muslims. To directly associate the founder of one of the world’s three great monotheistic religions with terrorist violence - the unmistakable meaning of the most explicit of these cartoons - is wrong, even if the intention was satirical rather than blasphemous.

Can’t we all just get along?

Dale Dougherty has written a thought provoking article about how the media uncritically repeats the claims from industry reports. In the article he takes a recent claim about robust sales in retail and traces its movement through various media outlets, only to find that no one really knows if the numbers are credible. His motivating opening line strikes me:

There should be a book titled “How News Is Made,” a book that could be for journalism what “The Jungle” was to the meatpacking industry. My version would offer no conspiracy theory, but I’d point out the preponderance of sloppiness and lazy thinking coupled with a herd mentality, most especially in business journalism.

While I agree emphatically, I would say that Chomsky covered this issue quite well in Manufacturing Consent. All the same, I’m pleased to see Dougherty raising the issue because a skeptical public is necessary for an honest media.

Readers interested in this topic may also wish to read an essay from Paul Graham about the impact of PR firms on the media.

Larry Sanger, the former co-founder of the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has begun to admit some quality control issues with the experiment. A Register article notes his displeasure with how Wikipedia has alienated established subject authorities. The piece goes on to describe the process whereby wiki fans rebuff such critiques:

Traditionally, Wikipedia supporters have responded to criticism in one of several ways. The commonest is: If you don’t like an entry, you can fix it yourself. Which is rather like going to a restaurant for a date, being served terrible food, and then being told by the waiter where to find the kitchen. But you didn’t come out to cook a meal - you could have done that at home! No matter, roll up your sleeves.

As a second line of defense, Wikipedians point to flaws in the existing dead tree encyclopedias, as if the handful of errors in Britannica cancels out the many errors, hopeless apologies for entries, and tortured prose, of Wikipedia itself.

Thirdly, and here you can see that the defense is beginning to run out of steam, one’s attention is drawn to process issues: such as the speed with which errors are fixed, or the fact that looking up a Wikipedia is faster than using an alternative. This line of argument is even weaker than the first: it’s like going to a restaurant for a date - and being pelted with rotten food, thrown at you at high velocity by the waiters.

Not so long ago I wrote with glee that Wikipedia planned to tighten its editorial rules, but it turned out to be an unsubstantiated rumor. While I think the decentralized approach has produced a tremendous volume of content and permitted anyone to add to the collective wisdom, the project inevitably must reckon with its position as an authoritative source. It seems perfectly reasonable to “graduate” articles to a level where contributors should meet some degree of authority when making revising the material.

Imagine that you, a seasoned Astronomer, had taken the effort to craft or improve an article about the doppler effect of red shifting and galaxies. Now suppose that Joe Shmoe comes along and “improves” the content with all good intents, but in his naivety he confuses the issue and distorts well accepted facts. Would you feel inclined to keep contributing? Maybe for a little while, but if it keeps happening (as it does now) you would eventually opt for other venues where people respect your contributions.

This isn’t to say that experts have all the answers, but I doubt that Wikipedia can make the leap from quantity of information to quality of articles unless it embraces a second tier of peer-reviewed submission. These two aims hardly seem at odds and I’m puzzled why it is met with such resistance in the wiki community.

Update: (24 Oct 2005): Vika Zafrin, on the Humanist mailing list, raises a compelling counterpoint to what I’ve written. From her perspective as a scholar she sees immediate value in the knowledge domain of informed persons who may not come from the academic tradition. I quote:

Since when are known experts the only people who “know what they’re talking about”, and what subjects are in question? If I want to know about l3375p34k, I’d rather ask teenage netizens with actual experience than a scholar. Again, it’s a matter of what you want to know. Wikipedia is a fount of colloquial as well as academic knowledge.

“We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.” These are the words spoken by Edward R. Murrow, who anchored See it Now on CBS, when he toppled the tyranny of Joseph McArthy. A new film, Good Night, and Good Luck, about the courage of Murrow and the malaise of the Red Scare will be released in metropolitan markets in October. It looks fantastic and may well be a useful reminder of why open government works best for the people.

I think the integrity of the situation is best summarize by David Strathairn, the actor who plays Murrow:

He was a real spokesman for the common man. He was a person who lived by an adage I heard the other day: It is your duty to always take care of those who are less powerful than you and always question those who are more powerful.

Murrow’s own words in 1958 sadden me that the quality of news reporting has degraded almost to the point of being unrecognizable.

I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and more mature than most of our industry’s program planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence. I have reason to know, as do many of you, that when the evidence on a controversial subject is fairly and calmly presented, the public recognizes it for what it is–an effort to illuminate rather than to agitate.

…

One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles. The top management of the networks with a few notable exceptions, has been trained in advertising, research, sales or show business. But by the nature of the coporate structure, they also make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs. Frequently they have neither the time nor the competence to do this. It is not easy for the same small group of men to decide whether to buy a new station for millions of dollars, build a new building, alter the rate card, buy a new Western, sell a soap opera, decide what defensive line to take in connection with the latest Congressional inquiry, how much money to spend on promoting a new program, what additions or deletions should be made in the existing covey or clutch of vice-presidents, and at the same time– frequently on the same long day–to give mature, thoughtful consideration to the manifold problems that confront those who are charged with the responsibility for news and public affairs.

It isn’t often that a movie premier comes to Charlottesville, but this Saturday evening The Confederate States of America will be shown. It is a what-if style documentary about modern America, supposing that the South had won the war among the states. The topic is quite sensitive, but I hope that level heads prevail.

Most likely the film is already sold out, so my waffling may have made the decision whether to nor to attend the event. I hope it raises some good topics for discussion, but I’ll keep my predictions to myself until I’ve had a chance to see it.

Update: (10/4/05) The link above goes to a perplexing parody site called eslave. If you click through anywhere you will go to the actual movie website.

Lately there has been some discussion about the visual clutter and imprecise meaning behind linking text when it is meant to cite a resource. Two projects have emerged to solve this, WP-Linknotes and Link Footnotes. I prefer the latter solution since it is technically less intrusive and I’ve been testing it for the last two months when posts warrant them. See a recent book review piece I wrote for an example.

In the process of doing this I’ve updated Owen’s code to support CSS, fixed a rendering issue in Safari and made the “title” text appear as a hover for the link number in-line. For those interested, you can download it. If you make any interesting changes, let me and Owen know about it.

As for the future, I believe it would be useful to make a footnote that doesn’t necessarily make use of a hyperlink. I can see modifying the the rel attribute of the anchor tag with a “note” value to support this. Would anyone find such a modification to be useful?

Delete is a fascinating project to depict Vienna without advertising. It is astounding to see how much of the public space is devoted to commercial interests. A similar project is The Untitled Project which strips text from photographs, thereby revealing the amount of textual advertising around us. Check out a good example or two.

I could easily go into a rant about the social ills of advertising, but I like how projects like this aim to make us more aware of the multitude of competing interests in public spaces.